


Fixing It

by EstellaB



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 3am conversations, Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Jemma Simmons Needs a Hug, and no wonder, did you know that's a suggested tag, more friendship than romance, please give jemma a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:48:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27300709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EstellaB/pseuds/EstellaB
Summary: Fitz is still angry with Jemma - for leaving, for coming back, for hurting Skye, for hurting him - but maybe, just maybe, things are starting to get better.
Relationships: Leo Fitz & Jemma Simmons, Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 7
Kudos: 30





	Fixing It

**Author's Note:**

> Sometime after Fitz’s “you never used to be so scared” and before their collaboration towards the end of series 2. Because, seriously, how did they get from one to the other? I’m still mad that we did not get a canon answer. Jemma needs a hug. Fitz needs a hug. They both need to repair their friendship. This is not strictly canon compliant as I have given them an extra day or two of time in the series, because my lovely science besties deserve just a little bit of breathing space.

Fitz is shuffling back to his room at 0304, glass of water in hand, when he sees a light on in the lab. Their lab. Jemma’s lab. Despite himself, he wants to know what’s so captivating that she’s still awake at this unearthly hour, but when he gets over there she’s pale and there are dark circles under her eyes. There’s a half-empty mug of tea next to her, and she’s frowning. As he glances over her shoulder, he sees Skye’s DNA analysis on the screen, and feels a flare of temper.

“Go to bed, Jemma,” he says, shortly. 

“Once I’ve finished this,” she responds, trying for a smile but not succeeding. She takes a sip of tea, but it’s gone lukewarm and she pulls a face. He hovers for a moment, but even after everything he can’t leave her while she’s so white and jittery and afraid. 

“You’re... exhausted.”

“It’s better than the alternative.” A long pause, during which he shows no signs of leaving. “When I sleep, I have dreams.” 

Oh. “…Bad dreams?”

“Not especially nice ones, no.” That clipped, calm tone again. She’s gripping the mug so tightly that her knuckles are white. She’s always loved that mug – it says _Actually, it’s Dr._ – a present he’d given her in some other life, after they’d hit adulthood and she’d started getting _Is it Miss or Mrs?_. He can’t believe she still has it – it’s chipped and faded, and it’s probably been in contact with some very unsanitary things in one lab or another.

“You should tell – tell someone about them.”

“Everyone here has more than enough going on without my nonsense.” Jemma puts the mug down – it clatters very loudly for 3am, and Fitz jumps.

“Perhaps they have enough going on… that their medic should be well, well-rested.” 

There’s an awkward stretch, during which the only sound is Jemma drumming her fingertips on her mug. He wonders, suddenly, when she became a fidget. After it becomes apparent that she isn’t going to look at him, and he isn’t going to leave (he wants to, very badly, but he can’t, not with the fidgeting and the cold tea and the dark circles), he pulls a chair over and sits near her. Not next to her, just near her. Before he can second-guess himself, it’s out. “I’m already awake.” 

For a long time, nothing – just Jemma looking at a computer screen; Fitz sitting near her, looking away. He’s just starting to get angry again that she’s not taken him up on his offer, not taken the olive branch, when he hears her breath hitch. Her shoulders are shaking, and she’s holding onto the desk now as tightly as she had the mug before. The first few tears hit her tablet, but he jumps up quickly and whisks it from under her. He doesn’t know what to do. Of course, he’s looked after a crying Jemma countless times – but not for months. He doesn’t know whether he can scoop her out of her chair and into a hug. He doesn’t even know if that’s what either of them wants. Helplessly, he puts his hand on her shoulder, and she grabs onto it like she’s drowning.

They stay there like that – Jemma still hunched at her screen, him looming behind her, hand on her shoulder – until the worst of the sobbing subsides. As it does, he hooks a foot around the leg of his chair and pulls it much closer before sitting down. She’s scrubbing at her face with her jumper, and he wishes he had tissues to offer her. His water’s untouched, at least, and he pops it down on the desk in front of her. Still holding on tight to him with one hand, she takes a couple of mouthfuls of water, her breathing slowly evening out again.

“It’s okay.” His voice no longer holds the edge it’s held ever since he came over – since she came back. “You’re safe.”

She stiffens, and for a moment he’s afraid that it was the wrong thing to say, but then she twists round in her chair and finally faces him, gathering his other hand into hers and pulling both into her lap. “Thank you for being so k-kind to me.”

He doesn’t know how to respond to that, so they sit there for a moment. Jemma takes a deep breath, and looks up at him. “I can tell you about the, the dream,” she says, still a little shakily. “But I didn’t want to bother you.” 

“I want you to bother me.” Again, it’s out before he can think about it, and he realises that it’s true. 

After a few more sips of water, she starts. “When we went down into – into the city – afterwards. To clear up. I had – I had – “ for a moment it seems like maybe the tears are going to come again, but she perseveres - “during the clean-up, I picked up some of the rubble, but when I looked at it, it was part of Trip’s f-face.” His heart breaks a little bit. He hadn’t known that. “That – that was – real. But in the dream – I look down at it and I think it’s Trip, but then I realise it’s, it’s you. It’s you. And then while I’m looking at it – at you – then the city floods, and we’re in the medpod, and, and as I watch you hit the button and collapse and I can’t, I can’t stop you, I can’t make you listen-” 

(He is genuinely thunderstruck by this. Almost all his nightmares involve Jemma being hurt. It has never occurred to him that the reverse might also be true). “And,” she continues, apparently determined to get it all out in one go, “and sometimes then I can’t get you to the surface in time – or, or, Fitz, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, but sometimes I drop you – but mostly it just ends where it really ended – I’m sat by your bed and, and you’re never going to wake up again. And Fitz – Fitz, I’m so sorry – I dragged you into the field – you didn’t want to come – and if I hadn’t-”

Now she _is_ crying again, now he’s more sure of himself, now he does pull her into a hug. Uncomfortable, stretched across two chairs, but they manage it. “You saved – you saved my life, Jemma.”

“You never would have – it never would have – if it hadn’t been for me – you nearly died – and Fitz, Fitz, I just keep hurting you and you’re my best, my best friend, I just want you to be happy and safe-”

“You only ever hurt me when you left.” His voice is soft – he’s stating a fact, and the anger that would have accompanied it even twenty minutes ago seems to have dissipated into the atmosphere.

“I had to leave because I was hurting you. And then I came back and I just hurt you again. I wish I knew how to fix it, Fitz.”

And at that, she buries her face in his shoulder and clams up entirely.

“Hey.” He runs a hand over her hair. “ _We’ll_ fix it.”

“R-really?” She pulls away from him, really looks at him, with her red eyes and blotchy face and snot everywhere, and he thinks that the sudden hope written all over her is maybe the best thing he’s seen in months.

“Yeah,” he promises. “Haven’t you heard? I’m engineering, you’re, bio, biochem. Between us, we can fix anything.”

\--

It isn’t fixed when he walks her to her room twenty minutes later and extracts a promise that she’s going to lie in the next morning. It isn’t fixed when she brings him a cup of tea in the garage the next day, and sits for a few minutes to watch him work with Mack. It isn’t even fixed when they bunk off for an afternoon to catch up on all the Doctor Who they’ve missed since Jemma left, or when their afternoon runs long into an evening with a bad film and a lot of snacks. But every time, he thinks, it gets a little less broken.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written for this fandom before, but I am currently working my way through series 3 (I think I'm on 3.12) and I paused briefly to read basically every FS story on this site that I didn't think would be full of spoilers. I have a lot of feelings about Fitz and Simmons and FitzSimmons.


End file.
